The Guardian Angel
by Flipout6
Summary: In a way they both needed saving. A traumatized ex-Brotherhood wanderer encounters an orphaned puppy one lonely night in the Capital Wasteland, and forges a friendship that will last a lifetime. NO LONGER a one-shot, Original characters, please review.
1. Chapter 1

All Jason heard was howling.

It was everywhere. It came from right in front of him, behind him, to his left and right. It echoed in the distance, bounced off the hills, flooded his ears. It thundered inside his skull, his brain, his very thoughts.

He knew for a fact he was hallucinating.

It didn't take his medical training to tell. The sounds coincided with the flashback playing in his head, a snippet of hundreds of memories slapped together and zipping by at the speed of thought. Howling, howling, and more howling. The howling of super mutants, the howling of dogs, the howling of _people, _his fellow Brotherhood knights, as they were shot, ripped to shreds, some of them literally eaten alive. Jason perceived these howls as real, when he knew that he shouldn't be. Even the Capital Wasteland didn't echo with the dying screams of a friend this often.

He stopped in the middle of a field, halting his exodus west for a night, the sun was late into setting. It was a trivial task to start a campfire, with the dead trees everywhere. He sat down, and the orange, hearth-like glow of the campfire cast enough light on him to reveal his features. He was barely twenty, with a thin but muscular build, uncut dark brown hair stretching to just above his neck and shallow, sunken cheeks. His eyes were a cold, dull blue color and betrayed the chaotic feelings inside him. He wore a run-of-the-mill regulator duster, combat boots, faded beige pants and a filthy white T-shirt. He had an old military rucksack on the ground beside him, a scoped .44 magnum called "Blackhawk" in his gun-belt holster, and two combat knives sheathed in a criss-cross pattern on the small of his back.

It didn't matter how long he stared into the fire, or how tired he became after he ate a meal, the howling wouldn't stop. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and downed a shot of scotch, to no avail. There was nothing in his thoughts except blood, gore, and screams...

And then a new kind of howling joined the ones in his mind.

Jason looked up, his Brotherhood holotags making a small chiming sound as they moved. He saw nothing, no gun flashes, no silhouettes, he only heard. And what he heard sounded distant. Staying vigilant, Jason continued to watch and listen. Soon the howling turned to yelping, and then...silence.

The wasteland was eerily silent, save Jason's flashbacks, for a solid hour. As the moon and stars came out in full, Jason prepared his sleeping bag. He untied the strings and unrolled it, getting ready for a night's long rest. The fire was dying, and soon he would have to rely on his Pip-boy for light...a device that was so rare that Jason had only seen the Wanderer and his father with one beforehand.

Out of the heavy darkness there came another sound, which Jason correctly identified as a real noise, not his hallucinations. He froze in place and listened, his hand inching towards Blackhawk, stopping immediately when he heard it again.

It was the sound of sadness, a terrible, crushing grief, the sound of one's innocence being crushed...and then the remains trodden on. Jason felt his heart fill with pity and sorrow, which surprised him. He usually tried shutting such things out. The Brotherhood Knight sought out the source of the sound. It took him a solid minute to locate it, and when he did, he halted in his tracks.

There was a small crater in the ground, and within it a mole-rat sized hole...and within it, a puppy, lying down, his head sadly resting in the dirt. The poor thing was shivering, and its ribs were easily visible. Jason switched on his pip-boy light, illuminating the baby German Shepherd in a soft green light that didn't even cause it to turn its head. Its fur was black and beige, with the odd fringe of white. Jason bent down on one knee, and it looked at him with grieving liquid-brown eyes, which quickly shot wide open when the dirt shifted behind him.

Jason quickly dispatched the Yao Guai that had also been looking for the pup with three shots from Blackhawk that echoed like thunder through the lethal silence of night. Judging from the blood caking its claws and jaws...it's latest meal had been the dog's father, mother, brothers and sisters...

It whined softly at Jason, and its head shifted slightly in his direction. He felt his heart crushed with sadness. Just like him, the puppy had lost everyone...it's parents and siblings, everything it had loved. Just like him, it was a lost soul left to wander the wastes...but even Jason was not so young, the pup could not adapt to death like he could.

Jason's face softened, and he felt his eyes grow hot with tears. He bent over to pick the puppy up, and it shied timidly away from him.

"Come on, pup." He coaxed, in his closest equivalent to a soothing voice. He held out his hand, and the dog sniffed it. It walked slowly out of the little rock cave that served as his shelter. Jason scooped it up into his arms, noting that it was a male. He cradled it in his arms carefully, feeling how cold the dog was in the chilly air. He brought it closer towards him, bringing his right arm out of its respective sleeve on his duster, and tucked the poor young dog into the inside of his coat, near his chest, its head sticking out, and let his body heat warm the tiny thing up. It was a rare pure-breed, one of the few left in the midst of the Great War. A pure-bred German Shepherd, as of tonight perhaps the last living member of its breed.

He walked back to the fire carefully, and fed the dog some of the meat he'd cooked himself for dinner. It was gently taken from his hand and ravenously eaten, an odd contradiction. He smiled at it through his dissipating tears.

"You like that, do you?" He asked it, and fed it another piece of meat, with similar results. He felt a wet tongue slap across his cheek in response. He gently scratched behind the puppy's ear, thinking about possible names for it. He'd decided already he wouldn't leave it out in the wastes to die.

He was still thinking about it that night when he went to bed, the dog curled up inside his jacket still after he'd removed his boots. He cautiously removed his jacket and set it down just beside the sleeping bag, careful not to jostle the sleeping baby hound, and slid into his own sleeping bag.

As his eyelids began to get heavy, Jason noticed that the howling in his head had stopped, and he looked at the slumbering puppy again.

And then the name came to him.

_Guardian._


	2. Chapter 2

It was a clear night, unlike the dull overcast that had cast shadows over the world when they'd first met. The full moon shined brightly in the sky, casting the entire wasteland in a pale white that reflected eerily off of the bright sand that covered this specific patch of hell. They were so far from any settlements that the entire Milky Way was visible in the sky, and Jason begrudgingly admitted to himself that it looked beautiful. Sporting a new bullet hole in the tails of his beaten duster, he continued to simply...walk.

The Pale Wastes. That was what this region was called, and now Jason could see why. There was so rarely a cloud in the sky that the wasteland looked like this almost every night, even when the moon wasn't in the sky. Everywhere he looked, Jason saw only a sea of ghostly white sand that at times resembled snow. It was a good thing he'd gathered the necessary supplies to make a fire, this desert got chilly at night. At least the lack of any big hills or mountains in the region allowed Jason to see threats from literally miles off, a potentially life-saving luxury out here.

Guardian padded along beside him, panting happily, a loping puppy that was still getting used to his own body. Every so often he would wander off to investigate some new scent or another, but would always come bounding back with his tongue lolling out of one side of his canine grin. At one point he even came back with a bone for Jason to throw.

"How do you find these things?" He asked, and threw it as far as he could, smiling.

This process continued for an hour, until Jason decided that it would be wise to set up camp. He managed to get a fire going using various scraps of cloth, and kept it going just barely long enough to cook a bit of meat before it died on him. He fed some of the meat to Guardian, who gobbled it up eagerly before insisting with a _huff _that Jason throw the bone for him again.

As he sat there and waited, for Guardian to return, Jason felt a sudden pang of sadness. The dog that he had named Guardian, because of how it was always there beside him, how it made the howling of his memories stop, how it comforted him when he needed it, would only live for a sixth of Jason's natural lifetime at most, which in this post-apocalyptic world was around fifty or sixty if you went by natural causes instead of dangers like raiders.

Well, depending on how you looked at it, those could be considered natural causes as well.

Jason sighed sadly as Guardian came bouncing back towards him, panting. He ate the last of his meat slowly, and Guardian plopped his rear down in the sand and looked at his master with a cocked head and a curious expression, dropping the bone at his own feet. Jason smiled weakly at him and utterly failed at convincing his canine companion that he felt fine. Amazing how dogs could detect things like these.

The German Shepherd whined slightly and shoved his head under his master's arm, looking at him with those infamous puppy-dog eyes. Jason looked at him, and the dog _huffed _again and snapped his tongue onto Jason's scruffy cheek, leaving a trail of moisture that he wiped off with a cringe. The dog yapped at him, trying to cheer his master up.

Jason smiled and chuckled lowly to himself, genuinely this time, and scratched the canine behind the ears and under the chin. Two of his favourite spots. Guardian flopped right over onto his back and allowed Jason to rub his belly, and nearly fell asleep right then and there. Then Jason spoke and he woke up again.

"I don't know how you do it." Jason grinned. He smiled so rarely that the Lyons' Pride had nicknamed him "The Scowler", a fitting name considering that he seemed permanently irritable. Of course when every single friend you had was always returned to the Citadel in a box filled with the pieces of them that could be recovered, they didn't really blame him for it.

Guardian barked at him again, playfully, and practically tackled him into the dirt, placing slobbery wet kisses all over his master's face. How it was dogs were so wholly loyal and loving like they were was completely beyond Jason, but when he was blessed with such a lovable creature as Guardian he was definitely not going to complain.

Jason may not have had his lifetime with Guardian, but Guardian had his lifetime to spend with Jason.


	3. Chapter 3

_Author's Note: This chapter is considerably more graphic than either of the others, and the reason the story's rated T. You've been warned. Enjoy!_

Cold nighttime winds echoed eerily through the dusty rafters of an old house, giving it a haunted feel to the more superstitious that would occasionally pass through. Jason, however, didn't accept such fearful ramblings as true and used the old house as a shelter for the night. He'd cooked his supper, eaten, and fallen asleep upstairs, Guardian right beside him.

The sweet darkness of rest was all he perceived, a black and empty slumber undisturbed by dream and nightmare alike. His breathing was shallow and even. He looked almost peaceful. Almost. He was pale and clammy with a fever, might be here longer than he'd like.

The hours crept by until it was well after midnight. Jason's fever worsened as he slept, and his breathing became even more shallow and rapid. Guardian was concerned, but couldn't do anything about it. He looked at his master and then rested his head back down. He sat back up and scratched his neck as the night wore on.

"Hey, think anyone's in there?" A voice, coming from outside. Guardian froze, ears cocked sideways.

"Let's find out..." This one was much quieter. Guardian stood up. Noises came from downstairs as the front door opened. He growled. His master didn't even stir.

Footsteps were followed by creaks as the old floorboards protested their sudden use. Guardian growled louder. "Hey, something's up here." Guardian growled louder, and turned around to nudge Jason with his nose. His master slowly woke up, shivering, wondering what was wrong.

"What is it, boy?" He whispered, his voice raspy and groggy.

"Hey, there's a guy up here! Looks tasty..." Guardian barked timidly at the shadow standing in the doorframe. Three more voices echoed their excitement from downstairs.

Jason, alarmed, suddenly had Blackhawk in his hand, swiped from its spot by his head as he struggled to get out of his sleeping bag. The figure stepped forward, hefting a rusty iron rod, sharpened into a lethal point at one end, grinning like a jackal. His teeth were sharp and yellow, his skin almost white. He wore scavenged rags and old clothing. A raider.

_Cannibals. _

Jason raised Blackhawk with a shaky hand and fired. The shot flew wide and went through the wall to the wraith-like figure's left.

"Got a gun!" He shouted and dashed forward, his weapon set to spear Jason through the stomach. Two more fast, unsteady shots missed before the last one hit him in the eye and blew his brains all over the wall. His twitching corpse collided with Jason mid-stride, and sent him crashing to the floor.

More footsteps thundered up the rickety old staircase in the hallway. Jason was pinned beneath the corpse of his previous assailant while Guardian was too young and scared to attack them. They saw his vulnerable state and laughed. One of them raised his arm and pointed something shiny at him.

Jason pulled the corpse on top of himself, using it as a shield against the nine-millimetre rounds that screamed at him through the darkness. Warm blood dribbled down on him from the dead cannibal's bullet wound, and Jason was unnerved as he felt the liquid soak his hair, face and shoulders, seeping into his white T-shirt. The bullets from the cannibal's pistol flew wide (thank God for the Shakes.) while five of them penetrated the corpse with a liquid _thwack _that only served to spray more blood everywhere before they stopped coming. Jason moved the corpse aside to make room for his arm, and Blackhawk's silver barrel poked out from underneath. The echoing report of the magnum thundered throughout the house as Jason's finger twitched and punched a fist-sized hole in the gunman's chest, killing him instantly and sending him tumbling back down the stairs, knocking one of his companions down with him.

Jason threw the corpse off of himself with a shaky breath. He'd seen a lot, but he'd never get used to that feeling. Guardian yelped, catching the ex-Knight's attention instantly. The only other raider on this floor had smartly decided that the adolescent dog would be easier prey and snatched Guardian up, ignoring the nasty bite he took to his hand. He reached into his belt, pulled out a simple kitchen knife, and raised it...

Jason had knives of his own, and as the cannibal raised his knife Jason grabbed one of the KA-BAR military knives that served as his close-combat weapons from the ground and lunged forward. The blade of the old military knife met its mark: his opponent's throat. He yanked the knife left and right, tearing the cannibal's throat open without mercy, and severing his windpipe completely in two. He dropped the knife and Guardian before he clutched his neck and gave two feeble gasps, falling backwards as he did so, his own blood soaking his chest and forming a dark pool by his head. Guardian stayed by his master's heel as Jason advanced to the stairs, where the remaining two were starting to climb back up again. He raised his pistol, but he was too late. Both of them jumped onto him at once from halfway down the staircase-must have been in the midst of a Jet high- and restrained both his arms. He couldn't hit either of them with Blackhawk, whether it be with a bullet or the gun itself, and a brass-knuckled fist hit Jason in the face and spit his chin open. What looked to be a club made out of bones hit him in the ribs, and he couldn't fight back.

Then one of the pale killers screamed and Jason could move his left arm again.

The knife he held in that hand plunged into the kidney of Jason's remaining assailant, the one with the club. He screamed and shoved Jason backwards. He closed the gap before Jason could shoot him, so he flipped Blackhawk around to use as a melee weapon, still clutching his knife in the other hand as the cannibal's comrade screamed.

The bone club flew through the air diagonally as the raider went right for Jason's head, and even in his feverish state he was able to just barely duck it. His adrenaline rush was hampered by his fever, which soaked his body with sweat and made even the stuffy air of the house feel cold. He shivered and wasn't nearly as agile as usual, and couldn't retaliate before the club came back at him from the other side, numbing his arm with the impact. Pulling himself together, Jason sent his foe reeling with a kick to the chest, and brought Blackhawk's grip up from his side, hitting its target in the intended spot: the temple.

The final ghostly figure was now on the floor and unconscious. Jason hit him again and again in the head until the skull split, inflicting dozens of fatal injuries as bone fragments pierced the brain. He stood up, flipping the pistol, prepared for more fighting. The screaming had stopped.

Guardian whined as he nudged Jason's hand, and was instinctively met with a reassuring pat on this head, which was _sticky._

"What the hell?" Jason muttered to himself as he looked down and saw the pup covered in blood. Terrified that Guardian might be injured, he inspected the hound for injuries. Nothing.

He looked at his beloved canine companion, and then to the bloody paw-prints that led up to the savaged corpse of the cannibal with the brass knuckles. Guardian hadn't gone for the throats like most dogs would, he wasn't trained to kill yet. Instead, he'd torn his victim's face to shreds with bites and paw-swipes, to the point that his face was practically submerged in blood and one couldn't recognize his face. If Guardian hadn't come along, Jason would have been beaten to death and in the process of being eaten right now.

His face split into a rare full-blown grin. "Who's a good boy?" A asked, and enthusiastically scratched both of the delighted Guardian's ears. It would seem he'd need to train Guardian to kill starting tomorrow.

Still grinning and shivering, Jason stumbled back to his supplies to grab some medicine for his fever and dry-swallowed it, before moving to pet Guardian again.


End file.
